A New Start?

I’ve had an epiphany. (I wrote that and then, in a brief moment of self-doubt, had to look up the word ‘epiphany’ just to make sure it  meant precisely what I thought it meant, apart from Wise Men trekking across far distant lands to visit the baby Jesus.  The joys of a quick google search revealed that there’s something called ‘The Urban Dictionary’ which defined epiphany as “When you’re really stoned and realise something”.  There’s a dictionary that’s not afraid of using the full majesty and splendour of the English language. Anyway, courtesy of ‘The Free Dictionary’ I have had

“A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization”.

(And Ernest Gowers is spinning in his grave).)

“What is this sudden intuitive realisation?”, I hear you cry, “do tell”.   It’s just this.  I am a lawyer.  It is what has defined me for the past 20 years.  Even when I was studying for a BA in Politics, I knew I wanted to be a solicitor, and so I was.  And I was very happy doing it.  I studied hard and worked even harder and was chugging up the conveyer belt towards partnership when I married a chap whose work takes him abroad and decided that I would go too.

It’s now been 6 years since I last solicited and it’s been a busy old time.  I’ve moved 4 times to 3 different countries (4 if you count Northern Ireland and England as separate countries), had 2 children, set up a business, taught English to Jews and Arabs, separated fights between Jews and Arabs who were learning English and learnt to bake. The knotty question of returning to my career, however, has been on my mind, particularly since we moved to Pakistan.  The way I see it, I have a year here to get my act together and then, when we go back to the UK I’ll be rejoining the workforce.

The problem is, however, that I don’t think I want to be a lawyer.   I loved (most of) my clients. I had the best colleagues a girl could ask for; I’m just not sure that I can get particularly excited about the exact interpretation of clause 4(b)(iii) anymore,  not now I’ve the perspective of grazed knees and lost dinosaurs to weigh it against – those are things I can get really exercised about.

So what to do?  I feel like I’m back at school with the career advisor (who told me I should be a librarian.  Thanks for that) and that the whole world is an open book, and it’s incredibly exciting.  I’ve an inkling that I might like marketing and communications. I don’t know that I’ll like it.  It might be a terrible idea, but at the moment it seems like it would be a good fit.

So I’ve applied for work experience.  I know – fun isn’t it!  I haven’t done work experience since school.  I’m hoping that they’ll say yes and that I can sit in the corner of a proper marketing (or Business Development if we’re feeling posh) department for a day, making coffee and seeing if it will work for me.  If they don’t, I’ll ask someone else until I find a nice marketing department I can visit. And then I’ll go from there.

Whatever happens it feels like I’m on the cusp of something new and potentially exciting.  I’ll keep you posted.